Space Hobo on Nostr: People here in Europe get kind of boggle-eyed when you tell them that local calls ...

People here in Europe get kind of boggle-eyed when you tell them that local calls were not metered in the US. Suddenly they understand why BBSes were such a big deal in the 80s and 90s.

We used to have a system called GremLink, where someone had an XT-class machine sitting in a closet with two modems: each one was hooked up to a phone line with a different "local" calling radius, and you could relay through it to extend your toll-free distance north or south. BBSes used it for exchanging packets of networked messages for each other after dark.